Many books about wine have a problem: they're expensive. A case in point is a recent book about Beaujolais. You might think that as a wine lover and former resident of Japan, the last redoubt of Beaujolais Nouveau, I was part of the target market for this work. Was I willing to spend £35 on it, though? No, I was not.
At £20, Alan Ramey’s Pressing Matters is therefore a relative bargain. The writer covers eight issues of importance, or at least matters of interest, within the wine world.
Ramey is American, and the co-owner of Ramey Wine Cellars in California. He writes in an academic style, and is not afraid of using footnotes, which is to be respected. He's also to be commended for not using annoying buzzwords like ‘intentionality’ and ‘wellness’.
The significance of some of the subjects Ramey addresses is debatable. For instance, he spends a lot of time on the issue of terroir, outlining arguments about whether the climate or the soil is more important. Does it matter, though? Perhaps to vine growers, but to the average wine enthusiast I don’t think it’s worth spending much time on.
The best part of the book is a thought-provoking chapter on the issue of taste, and the extent to which it’s possible to determine the quality of a wine in an objective fashion. This may seem esoteric, but it should matter to drinkers as many are willing to buy based on a recommendation or a score.
Ramey notes that balance is typically accepted as a sign of quality, but points out that some grapes which have lofty reputations give unbalanced wines. Riesling, for example, often has off-the-scale acidity. Length and intensity are dubious indicators of quality too, according to Ramey, as the wine just might not taste good.
These means of judging a wine will be familiar to anyone who’s studied for the WSET Diploma. What about complexity? Ramey writes that it's often seen as part of quality because the opposite - something 'monolithic' - 'is decidedly not good'. I'm not convinced, though. Red Rioja Reservas and Gran Reservas are wonderful, in my opinion, because they have a ton of oak. For what it’s worth, I think length is the key to quality, as long as the wine tastes good, of course.
The chapters on organics, biodynamics and natural wine are useful, as the topics are fashionable. Still, these sections, like the book in general, would be more enjoyable if the reader got to the bottom of what Ramey believes. I wanted to know if he feels that the whole idea of a natural wine is flimflam, or if he thinks biodynamics is hokum. His goal was clearly to make the reader think, but the end result is like a PhD thesis in which the candidate never reaches a conclusion.
That said, Pressing Matters does have another thing going for it: it’s short. Books about wine have taken the same path as Hollywood films in recent times: the longer, the better, apparently. Many could do with having a hundred pages lopped off. Perhaps then they would be cheaper.
Published in The Wine Merchant, March 2026.
